Saturday, February 7, 2009

Halliwell Sutcliffe

Halliwell Sutcliffe, born in Shipley near Bradford in 1870 and died in Linton-in-Craven in 1932, was an author of popular novels, all now out of print. Most of them are historical romances set in the Yorkshire Dales, and many of them romanticize the Stuarts, especially Bonnie Prince Charlie. Sutcliffe's father was headmaster of Bingley Grammar School from 1873 to 1901, and Sutcliffe was educated there and at King's College, Cambridge. In 1904 he married Mabel Cottrell of Twickenham, and they lived first at Embsay near Skipton, where their elder son Derek was born in 1905. After eighteen months in Embsay, they moved to Linton on the banks of the Wharfe, and here their younger son Noel was born in 1906. Their house was called Troutbeck, but about 1913 Sutcliffe renamed it White Abbey, believing that it had once been a grange of Fountains Abbey. It was here that Halliwell Sutcliffe died in January 1932, aged 61.